[This post originally appeared on Forbes.com on 14th August 2012].
It seems almost silly to ask the question: who can sit next to children on flights? Obviously, parents would be desirable but sometimes that can’t happen. It may be that a child or children are flying
Virgin Australia's Airbus A330-200 (R) taxis past a Virgin Blue Boeing 737-800 (R) after landing at Sydney International Airport on May 4, 2011. Domestic carrier Virgin Blue and its international offshoots, Pacific Blue and V Australia, will all be known as Virgin Australia, with negotiations underway to bring Polynesia Blue under the same umbrella. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)
unaccompanied or maybe, because of poor airline seating policies, they are apart from parents (Air Canada, I’m talking about you here). In those cases, they are going to end up seated next to an adult they don’t know.
Well, it turns out that some airlines actually have a policy on this. Specifically, it appears that if the adult stranger (to the children) is a women, that’s fine but for a man, that’s prohibited. Story No.1 comes from Virgin Australia. They apparently have this policy and unseated fire fighter, John McGirr, who had been seated next to two children. McGirr recounts the experience:
‘Sir we are going have to ask you to move’‘Why’, I said.‘Well, because you are male, you can’t be seated next to two unaccompanied minors’.Shocked, I replied, ‘ Isn’t this sexist and discriminatory?’She replied, ‘I am sorry, but that is our policy’.
Basically, he felt like a pedophile precisely because he was treated like one. The story created an uproar (although not everyone disagreed with Virgin’s policy). Virgin are now reviewing their approach.
Virgin are not alone. The week brought a similar incident on Qantas who claimed they were maximizing “the child’s safety and well-being.” Really Qantas? You seem to run out of pre-ordered children’s meals quite quickly if that is really what you are doing.
And here is Boris Johnson’s experience on British Airways. Yes, that is Boris Johnson who is now mayor of London.
There we were, waiting for take-off, and I had just been having a quick zizz. It was a long flight ahead, all the way to India, and I had two children on my left. Already they were toughing each other up and sticking their fingers up each other’s nose, and now — salvation!Hovering above me was a silk-clad British Airways stewardess with an angelic smile, and she seemed to want me to move. “Please come with me, sir” said the oriental vision.
At once, I got her drift. She desired to upgrade me. In my mind’s eye, I saw the first-class cabin, the spiral staircase to the head massage, the Champagne, the hot towels.
“You betcha!” I said, and began to unbuckle. At which point, the children set up a yammering. Oi, they said to me, where do you think you are going? I was explaining that the captain had probably spotted me come on board, don’t you know. Doubtless he had decided that it was outrageous for me to fly steerage, sound chap that he was. I’d make sure to come back now and then, hmmm?
At which the stewardess gave a gentle cough. Actually, she said, she was proposing to move me to row 52, and that was because — she lowered her voice — “We have very strict rules”.
Eh? I said, by now baffled. “A man cannot sit with children,” she said; and then I finally twigged. “But he’s our FATHER”, chimed the children. “Oh,” said the stewardess, and then eyed me narrowly. “These are your children?” “Yes,” I said, a bit testily. “Very sorry,” she said, and wafted down the aisle — and in that single lunatic exchange you will see just about everything you need to know about our dementedly phobic and risk-averse society.
Johnson was saved public humiliation but say the injustice in the policy. Subsequently, British Airways was forced to change its policy following a law suit. They now try and sit children together. They apparently think, against all evidence, that an adult is more likely to be a sex offender than a child might be a bully.
Which brings me to my story. I wasn’t discriminated against but having been incensed by all this discussion and the fear of pedophiles, I took a different approach. The other day we boarded our long, 13 and a half hour flight from Sydney to LA. Our family had two seats at an end and then three of the four seats in the middle of our Qantas aircraft. Our plan had been to seat the two eldest children together and have the two adults with the youngest one. The youngest wasn’t too happy about this as she wanted to be next to her brother and sister. But then we got on the plane and sitting in the four seat was a man. That caused me to think about our youngest child’s plea. Why were we doing things that way? It could be we were trying to spare the stranger any discomfort from sitting next to a child. But it could also have been that we subtly held ‘stranger danger’ feelings ourselves? I couldn’t risk the latter so I let the children sit with each other while we parents slinked over to a separate area (in the same cabin but over the continuous mathematical line that would be perfect accompaniment). We would defiantly protest Qantas’ policy.
Now the news is, of course, that nothing bad happened. Well, to our children. To the man, I’m not so sure. It was a pretty smooth flight but you can’t get perfect behavior for 13 odd hours. But he didn’t call a waitress and claim that he should be moved according to Qantas policy so it couldn’t have been too bad. Perhaps he was pleased that some parents had confidently not considered him to be a sex offender.
But think of the alternative. Yes, Qantas might be discriminating against men by making them appear to be sex offenders but, when they get their seating policy right, a disproportionate number of women are finding themselves seated next to unaccompanied children on flights. Boris Johnson’s heart lept when he thought he might be moved from his own children as we know that adults, if given a choice, would rather be next to other adults. And there are many more women suffering from this than men likely being moved. Sounds like another consequence of discrimination to me.
When it comes down to it, like so many aspects of airline policy — consider how you are forced to turn off a Kindle on takeoff — the airlines have got their priorities wrong because they can’t get their statistics right. Consider the caption in this recent British Airways ad.
We test our cheese as meticulously as we test our engines.
If not for the accompanied small font explanation that might be taken in a bad light. We expect airlines to quantify risks well when it comes to safety but surely our confidence in them might be harmed a little when they can’t calculate risks in relation to other matters.
For unaccompanied children, I suspect the risk of any criminal behavior befalling them is might less than say, them being misplaced by an airline. On that score, this recent United Airlines experience may given parents far more cause for concern.
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